Truth Or Territory: A Biblical Approach To Spiritual Warfare (Review By Fred Butler)

[Editor’s Note: The following guest post is by Fred Butler. Re-published here in its entirety, with his permission, it originally appeared on his highly recommended site, Hip and Thigh, “Smiting Theological Philistines With A Great Slaughter (Judges 15:8). We encourage you to bookmark his site, join his email list, and be edified by Fred’s always worthwhile reads. Pulpit & Pen is grateful to him for allowing us to share his review on Jim Osman’s book, itself a must-have asset for every believer to use as a sound exegetical resource in knowing the Biblical truth about spiritual warfare.]

Shortly after I came to know the Lord, I began attending a Baptist church that had an unhealthy fixation with spiritual warfare techniques. Leaders modeled such practices as praying hedges of protection around individual people, their homes, and our church, binding Satan, and identifying territorial demons who ruled over neighborhoods and cities.

I remember once how a prayer walk was organized during which members of our church marched around the parameter of the state university campus in our town in a “Joshua fought the battle of Jericho” fashion binding demons and claiming authority over the place in Jesus’s name. Thankfully, the campus wasn’t too big, because I just remember it being blazing hot that day.

On another occasion, a deacon teaching our Sunday school class solemnly warned us of how foolish it is to leave your house or dorm room without spiritual protection from God. He lectured us on the importance of praying a hedge around ourselves and our families so as to prevent demonic influences in our lives.

Still another time, we had a Southern Baptist “evangelist” named Sam Cathy come to our church to lead a series of revival services for the week. Each evening he entertained us with his fantastic adventures fighting demons. He told us of how demons were typically behind every sinful choice a person made. He told us how he commanded demons to tell him their plans, and in one case, the demons were arranging homosexual liaisons for a particular pastor with the intent of bringing him to be the president of the SBC and exposing him in a devastating, nationwide scandal.

My church was supposed to be a non-Charismatic Baptist church, mind you; yet the books of Frank Peretti and the counseling of Neil Anderson shaped the spiritual environment.

What I was taught about the devil, demons, and spiritual warfare is not isolated. The average church-goers today, both charismatic and non-charismatic, believes genuine spiritual warfare involves binding Satan, identifying and fighting off territorial spirits, and praying up hedges of protection around themselves and their families. This extremely misguided perception of our enemy is why Jim Osman’s book is an important polemical work addressing the topic.

Osman is the pastor of Kootenai Community Church in northern Idaho. Like me, he came to the Lord in Christian circles that had an aberrant perspective of the demonic. He was taught the same superstitious nonsense I was taught about fighting Satan. Methodologies that Osman rightly identifies as more akin to Harry Potter novels than biblical Christianity.

His study is broken into four parts (all beginning with the letter “E” so you can remember them).

Part one is where Osman establishes the biblical principles regarding spiritual warfare. He opens by bringing us to our starting point, the authority of holy Scripture. As he points out, one’s personal experience often trumps Scripture, especially among the modern spiritual warfare practitioners.

He then provides a brief overview of 2 Corinthians 10 and explains how our battle with spiritual forces has to do with defending biblical and theological truth and nothing at all with taking back physical territory allegedly held by a hierarchy of demons. He ends the first section discussing our true enemy that is a spiritually lethal combination of the Devil, the world, and our flesh.

The second part exposes the key, unbiblical practices of spiritual warfare teachers. He spends five individual chapters exploring what he calls “carnal weapons,” that he defined in the first section in his study of 2 Corinthians 10. Those five practices are praying hedges, hexes, binding Satan, rebuking Satan, and spiritual mapping. Osman thoroughly goes through each one, looking over the proof-texts spiritual warfare experts use to defend them and explains why many of them have nothing whatsoever to do with “spiritual warfare.”

Part three explains four important biblical perspectives that comes along with spiritual warfare teaching. He answers three questions, Can a Christian be demon-possesed?, Is Christ’s authority ours?, and What about exorcisms? The fourth perspective is what the Bible teaches regarding spiritual warfare and Christian sanctification and he answers the notion that demons are the source of a person’s sin problems.

Lastly in the fourth section, Osman spends a couple of chapters examining Ephesians 6 and the whole armor of God. He provides an exposition of the passage, contrasting what Paul actually taught on the subject of spiritual warfare and what spiritual warfare proponents teach. It is a well done part of the book.

In my opinion, pastor Osman has provided Christians with a valuable apologetic resource. He is training Christians how to think about spiritual warfare by addressing a topic that is pretty much avoided because no one really knows exactly how to interact with the claims put forth by a number of alleged spiritual warfare experts. His book not only debunks their assertions, but also gives the reader a much needed response in dealing with a pervasive false teaching that has infected numerous congregations. It is well worth the investment.

[Guest Post by Fred Butler]

Truth or Territory: A Biblical Approach To Spiritual Warfare is available HERE.

To connect to Fred’s site, click the image below. (You’ll be glad you did!)